


Seventy Eight Hours (and Thirty Two Minutes)

by standbygo



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, Johnlock Roulette, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So everything was new for both of them." Sherlock and John figure out the borders of their new relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventy Eight Hours (and Thirty Two Minutes)

John Watson had been woken up in many different ways in his lifetime:

  * By the sounds of his parents arguing drunkenly in the middle of the night;

  * By nurses, from an all too brief kip on a stretcher during his internship in an A&E

  * By a drill sergeant yelling in his ear during basic training;

  * By the sounds of machine gun fire in Kabul;

  * And, on one memorable occasion, after a colossal knee’s up in uni, by a bucket of ice cold water thrown on him by his mates, splashing him from heel to head.




Sherlock had woken him before of course: usually by snapping on his bedroom light and shouting, “Off out John! It’s a case – double murder! Come _on_!”, leaving John stumbling about his bedroom, still three quarters asleep, trying to figure out how to make his pants work.

But nothing, nothing in his life had prepared John Watson for the experience of being woken up by Sherlock Holmes licking and nuzzling at his hipbone.

John rose into consciousness and arousal at about the same speed, looking down at Sherlock fondly. He and Sherlock had now been lovers for – three days? John had lost track of time a bit. He must ask Sherlock, who had been keeping track of the hours, amusing John hugely – and had spent nearly all of that time in bed, and all of it naked.

John had had lovers before, of course, but no “first time” experience like this, with this intensity. He had never felt this degree and combination of love and desire before, with years of bottled up and ignored sexual tension behind it, and its damn near explosive consummation and release. Another factor was that he had never had a male lover before, and it was fascinating to explore not only the depths of his feelings for someone, but also to express that love in a physical way he had never even considered before. It was rather like losing one’s virginity again, but without the teenage angst and acne.

Sherlock, on the other hand, had had zero direct sexual experience. It still boggled John’s mind that a man with Sherlock’s staggering good looks had never been pulled before. Well, it was possible Sherlock had been flirted with and had been oblivious to it. But now the beast had been awakened, and within three days Sherlock had transformed from a shy, clumsy kisser to an energetic and inventive lover.

So everything was new for both of them.

John wondered how long Sherlock had been licking at his hipbone before he had woken. Part of Sherlock’s sexual awakening seemed to be exploring parts of John’s body with an intensity usually reserved for clues or cases. Yesterday – yesterday? – he had for some reason become transfixed by the back of John’s left knee and had kissed and licked and nibbled at it for nearly an hour. For his part, John learned about a new erogenous zone on his body and nearly came from the contact without being touched anywhere else.

John smiled down at Sherlock, carding his hands through the mussed curls. “Hey, there,” he murmured.

Sherlock interrupted his explorations and looked up at John, leaning his head on the hip in question. “Did I wake you? I am sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, lovely way to wake up.” He stretched and hummed, noting the angle of the sun through the window. His bedroom window faced west, and Sherlock’s south, so his ability to tell the time was impaired. “Timecheck? I’ve lost track again.”

Sherlock glanced at the clock beside the bed. “9:48am. Thursday.” And with a small smile, “Seventy eight hours and thirty two minutes.”

“Time for a morning kiss then.” John pulled Sherlock up to his level and settled in for a lazy, blissful snog.

They were rudely interrupted by a sonorous rumble. John broke off the kiss and looked at Sherlock quizzically, who looked slightly chagrined. “I… I’m hungry, John. How can I be hungry? I ate eighteen hours ago!”

John chuckled and started untangling himself from the sheets and from Sherlock’s long legs. “I’ve put a few more demands on your transport of late than you’re used to, I suppose,” he said. “Come on, up and out. Let’s see what we’ve got in the fridge.”

He padded across the hall to the kitchen, Sherlock not far behind. “Is that common? Sex makes you hungry?”

“Ravenous.” John opened the fridge, feeling the cool air on his belly. “Wow. That… is an empty fridge.” He hadn’t seen the fridge this empty since Sherlock cleared it out for the severed head. He shifted around a few items. “Sherlock, these fingers are going to go off soon if you don’t finish that experiment.”

“Don’t care,” Sherlock said, kissing John’s shoulder blade.

John turned, gaping at Sherlock in astonishment, then smiled and kissed him deeply. Moments flew by in earnest snogging until John himself broke it off – “Food, food, food, need food…” Ignoring Sherlock’s disappointed groan, he flipped open the breadbox. “Nothing. We’ve eaten everything. No bread, no milk, no beans.  Just fingers.”  With mounting dread he opened the cupboard and checked. “There’s not even any tea. Sherlock, this is a disaster of epic proportions.”

He headed towards his room. “I’ll just run out to Tesco and stock up.”

Sherlock followed John up the stairs in a manner reminiscent of a bratty little brother not wanting to be left behind – which, John remembered, he actually was. “Can’t we just get takeaway again?”

“Not at this hour, and not for these things. You know, by the way, that we’ll never be able to order from Royal China again.”

“Whyever not?”

“You bloody well know why.” It had been John’s one concession to the all-nudity-all-the-time fest – he had put on his housecoat to greet the delivery boy with the food. Short on cash, he had called up to Sherlock to bring him another tenner. Silly assumption on his part to think that Sherlock would put on his own dressing gown before bringing the note.

Sherlock’s arms wound around him as John opened his dresser looking for clean clothes. “Don’t worry, John, I’m not that hungry, really.” Another squeal from his stomach somewhat detracted from this argument.

“Nice try. Besides which, _I’m_ hungry, and a hungry John is a stroppy John.” He pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, pushing his feet into his trainers without bothering with socks. “Right, so: milk, bread, tea, um, eggs maybe, we can have a fry-up, I’ll see if there’s bacon or sausages… Where’s my wallet?”

Sherlock seemed intent on distracting him through the whole process, untucking John’s shirt and slipping one hand underneath, sliding the other over the curve of John’s arse. John moaned a little, turned and gave Sherlock three hard kisses. “Anything you want?”

“You.”

“To eat, love.”

“You.”

John groaned. “Evil man. Insatiable. What have I created.” He kissed the tip of Sherlock’s nose, and suddenly remembered that his wallet would be downstairs in his trousers, discarded either in Sherlock’s room or the sitting room. He clattered down the stairs again, Sherlock right behind. A quick glimpse into the sitting room revealed his trousers, half underneath the armchair. He grabbed them and pulled his wallet and keys from the pockets, with triumph.

Suddenly Sherlock grabbed John’s left wrist in a firm but not painful grip. John froze in surprise.

“Don’t go, John.” Sherlock swallowed, and John was horrified to see a terrible sadness in his eyes. “Please.”

“What’s wrong, love? What’s going on?”

Sherlock said nothing for a long time, staring into John’s face searchingly. To John’s horror, Sherlock’s face slowly morphed into the mask that he usually wore for strangers, one of distance and aloofness.

“Never mind,” he said, pulling away and grabbing his dressing gown from under the sofa cushion. He threw himself into the robe while lifting his chin. “Not to worry, I’ll just get started on those fingers.”

Something had gone terribly wrong, and John knew it but couldn’t understand. He felt sick, and quickly held Sherlock in place by his shoulders. “No. No no no. You have to talk to me, love, tell me what’s wrong, I don’t know what’s wrong and you have to tell me.”

Sherlock’s eyes shifted from side to side, his lips pressing together. John knew him well enough to know that an answer would not be quickly forthcoming. “You have to tell me, Sherlock,” he repeated gently.

Sherlock’s mouth twitched; John knew how hard he was trying and waited, waited.

“I just-” A quick hitch of breath, another twitch of the lips. “If you leave, I…”

John ducked his head, trying to look into Sherlock’s eyes. “It’s okay, I’m just going to Tesco’s, it’s just down the road, I’ll be right back.”

“I don’t want it to end, John!” Sherlock burst out.

John frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”

Sherlock straightened his back, clenched his jaw, and spoke rapidly in a way that reminded John of machine gun fire. “It’s been lovely, hasn’t it, this break from your heterosexuality? Bit of tension relief? Glad I could oblige. I’ll just get on then.”

Sherlock tried to turn away but John grabbed his arm. “Don’t say that. You know I don’t think that. How can you…”  Suddenly John thought of what the problem might be. “Are you saying… Did you think that if I leave the flat, this-” he waved a hand between them, “-this would finish? That’s we’d be done?”

Sherlock didn’t have to nod; his silence was reply enough.

John pulled Sherlock closer, tangling his fingers into Sherlock’s hair. He had forgotten, forgotten again that despite Sherlock’s incredible intellect, his experience with relationships was nil, and that he had been hurt over and over, and had been so badly damaged by the world, and that Sherlock had defended himself by creating walls of brick and stone and broken glass, and that John was so, so lucky that Sherlock had let him past those walls.

_I have to help him,_ thought John _. I will work so very hard to help him._

“Listen to me, Sherlock Holmes. I will never not want you. I will never not need you like air. I will never not want _this_.” His hands slid down Sherlock’s chest and rested over his heart, noting the rapid beat – but was the beat slowing, calming, evening out?

“This time has been the best time of my life, without exaggeration. I’ve loved every moment of being with you. But this is the amazing thing about relationships, you mad genius,” John leaned in closer, looking deeper into the eyes that changed colour every time he looked, “I can leave this flat, get food, come back, cook it for us, we’ll eat, and then I’ll drag you to bed again.” Sherlock’s eyes lit up, and John felt another kind of reaction against his thigh, so he decided to expand on his point. “Or we’ll skip the bedroom and I’ll just take you on the kitchen table.” Yes, he definitely had Sherlock’s attention now.

“And Lestrade will call with a case, and we’ll run off and you’ll figure out who did it from paper cut on the victim’s hand, and we’ll chase down the suspect, and then we’ll come home and have sex on the landing standing up with all our clothes on because we can’t wait a second longer.”

Sherlock’s eyes were starting to look a bit unfocused while being absolutely attentive.

“And it doesn’t have to just be in this flat. Sometime, when we’re ready, I’ll kiss you and hold your hand in front of the fellows from the Met, or down at the pub, or in front of Mrs. Hudson. Because I’m not ashamed of _this_ ,” he shook Sherlock, gently, very gently, “and I am so _proud_ to be with you. I’ve always been proud to be your friend, and now I’m proud to be your lover.

“This will never end now, Sherlock. I promise.”

And then they were kissing again, but with a different flavour – not frantic with need and lust, but sealing the promise into each other’s breath, to be held within their lungs and never exhaled.

John felt a little dizzy when the kiss ended and leaned his forehead against Sherlock’s. “Okay now?”

“Mmm.”

But John knew Sherlock, he knew how his brain worked, that doubt would set in again the second he stepped out the door. And the solution came swiftly, and John smiled to himself.

“How long does it take me to get to Tesco’s and back?”

Sherlock looked startled by the question, and spoke as if wakening. “There’s… there’s variables… number of items to be purchased-”

“Say ten items.”

“- whether it’s raining-”

“It’s not.”

“- time of day and day of the week, but it’s early Thursday,” Sherlock was speeding up now, “no one but stay at home parents and freelancers.”

“So?”

“Twenty one minutes, forty five seconds.”

“Assume that I shall walk _very_ fast.”

Sherlock smiled. “Eighteen minutes, twelve seconds.”

“Right. This is what you need to do while I’m gone.” He pulled himself back from Sherlock a bit, to make sure he could see his whole face.

“We’ve both learned a lot these three days, yeah? About,” his voice went a bit husky, “intimacy. Being close. What feels good.”

He pulled Sherlock’s hair very gently until his head tilted to the side, exposing his long, elegant throat. John leaned up and kissed his throat deeply, feeling the pulse jump under his lips. “Giving…” he whispered against his skin, then shifted and tilted his own head back. He didn’t need to direct Sherlock at all, but immediately felt soft lips on his own neck, felt his own pulse jump, “…and taking.”

He started kissing a line along the top of Sherlock’s shoulder, feeling his own eyes roll into this back of his head with pleasure. He forced himself to focus. “But let me tell you this, my dear – we have only just scratched the surface of the kinds of things we can do.”

He emphasized his point by grazing his teeth along the pale skin, and heard Sherlock groan softly in response. “I know a bit more than you, but you know I don’t know a whole lot about this, for men.  So I need you to do something for me.”

He pulled away and looked into Sherlock’s eyes again. “ _Research_.”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed with confusion.

“Things to try,” John said, licking his lips. “Tips. Tricks. _Experiments._ ”

Sherlock’s eyes lit up with a fire usually reserved for complex deductions, new cases, and serial killers.

John nodded, gesturing over Sherlock’s right shoulder. “Your laptop’s over there.”

Sherlock grinned, his huge, rare, natural grin. “John Watson, you are a genius.” He kissed John hard, then leapt towards the computer, his dressing gown flying behind him like a cape.

John waited, grinning, until Sherlock had the laptop open and was stabbing at the power button impatiently, then grabbed his wallet and keys.

“I’ll aim for seventeen minutes,” he called, and walked – very quickly indeed – out the door.

 

_End_

 


End file.
